Text III. THE FALL OF BIG BUSINESS. Comprehension and Discussion Questions

1. How would you characterize the development of democratic societies?

2. What does social volatility depend on in the world of market economy?

3. Does economic competition place national societies under increasing strain?

4. Can the spread of market economy and business lead to any social irresponsibility?

5. The spread of market behavior can be the danger to democracy, can’t it?

6. Why cannot modern nations fulfill the promise of democracy?

 

Practical Task:

    Read through text II and find in each paragraph a topical sentence that renders the main information.

 

Text III. THE FALL OF BIG BUSINESS

    “Big” no longer means, as it once did, “successful”; before long it is likely to mean “failing”. If this prediction seems too bleak, recall how rosy the outlook seemed for big firms ten years ago. When globalization became a cliché, businessmen assumed that big firms would gain the most from lower trade barriers and converging tastes. Global markets, it seemed, would call for global brands from global companies managed globally. Firms big enough to spend lavishly on automated factories and computerized offices would be able to exploit glittering new technologies faster than smaller, and poorer rivals. … Many pundits confidently forecast that a handful of giant firms would dominate car making, electronics, banking, entertainment, advertising and publishing, to name only a few.

    At the time, such predictions seemed plausible. For decades firms in almost every business had sought “economies of scale”, the idea that manufacturing or distributing goods in ever larger volumes lowers costs per unit, so that a firm becomes more efficient as it grows. Most managers also recognized that expanding a business also involves new costs. As they grow, firms may become more bureaucratic, inflexible and wasteful. Employees, believing themselves to be mere cogs, are less accountable and harder to motivate. But such diseconomies were usually a footnote. They seemed more than outweighed by the benefits of bigness. The triumphs of mass production early in the century had given birth to most of the giant firms which came to tower over their industries. That bigger was better was rarely disputed. Until recently it was even true. The great surprise of the last decade has been that the changes which were supposed to make bigger even better have had the opposite effect.

    A blow to big firms is that the use of computers, confounding most forecasts, is narrowing economies of scale in manufacturing and distribution, not expanding them. Factory automation is making it possible to produce goods cheaply in smaller volumes. The plummeting price of computers is enabling smaller firms to employ the same logistical techniques, sophisticated financial models, and automated payrolls and other administrative tasks that were available only to big firms in the past.

 

Vocabulary notes

prediction – предсказание

bleak – печальный

to recall – вспоминать

to assume – предполагать, допускать

lavishly – щедро

glittering – заманчивый

pundits – учёные мужи

confidently – убедительно

plausible – правдивый

entertainment – развлечение

inflexible – негибкий

wasteful – расточительный

mere cogs – всего лишь мелкие сосиски

footnote – второстепенный

to outweigh – превосходить

confounding – сбивающий с толку

plummeting – снижающийся

enabling - позволяющий

Comprehension and Discussion Questions

1. Which two adjectives with opposite meanings are used here to talk about the future?

2. If consumer tastes converge, do they become more similar or less similar?

3. If a prediction is plausible, is it credible?

4. If a forecast is confounded, is it proved right?

5. If a price plummets, does it fall by a small amount?

 

 

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